Templer and the Road to Malayan Independence: The Man and His Time by Leon Comber (review)

As stated by the author, the book was written in response to a query posed to the author: in his mind was there a place for another book on General Sir Gerald Templer, the penultimate High Commissioner and Director of Operations, Malaya, 1952–4? By giving a positive, though conditional, answer, Dr Leon Comber set himself up for the task of writing the life of General Templer and his time as chief administrator in Malaya.

The book is, to a certain degree, evidence of Dr Comber’s authority on the subject. He is one of the few surviving British officers who not only served in postwar Malaya even before the arrival of General Templer in 1952, but also was one of the high-ranking intelligence officers of the Malayan Special Branch during its formative phase and difficult years of the Emergency. Dr Comber knew Malaya through first-hand experiences as much as, or even more than, through his accumulative reservoir of academic knowledge of the country that he has chosen to be his homeland. By choosing to focus on Templer the administrator rather than the fairly well-trodden aspect of Templer the decisive military leader, Dr Comber also brings academic freshness to the study of this ‘dictatorial’ British pro-consul and makes the book that much more entertaining and interesting.

General Templer as portrayed in the book emerges as a confident and determined leader who paid little attention to the social and diplomatic niceties required of an officer of his stature in handling socio-political issues and peoples in Malaya. It is clear that the newly arrived High Commissioner had not, prior to taking up this challenging post, familiarized himself with Malaya, its peoples, its socio-cultural uniqueness nor its history. Possibly because the General paid little attention to their various legitimate, or otherwise, sociopolitical and economic claims, he became increasingly unpopular with local political leaders, with the exception of Dato’ Onn Jaafar. And in spite of his sympathetic leaning towards the Malays and their socio-political plight, General Templer displayed his suspicion of Malay leaders, including Tunku Abdul Rahman and Tun Dr Ismail; the sentiments were clearly reciprocated. Templer displayed even more succinctly his unhappiness and impatience with the MCA leaders and their favourite adviser, Victor Purcell. Yet his programme for Malaya and its future, ‘The Templer Plan’, was clearly the first serious and comprehensive step towards self-government and independence of Malaya. It is to Templer’s credit that it was he who put into practice his strong belief that, ‘the defeat of the communist terrorists in Malaya was not to be achieved by military action alone, but also by an imaginative and progressive policy of assisting the diverse peoples of Malaya towards the longer-term objectives: the forging in due course of a united and self-governing Malayan nation…’ (p. 53).

The Templer Plan undoubtedly represents this ‘imaginative and progressive policy’ and Malaya was, even before Tunku Abdul Rahman and UMNO took their first serious political move to free Malaya, set on the road that eventually led to its final destiny, the independence of the nation. Yet paradoxically, Templer did not believe that Malaya was anywhere near independence. His comprehensive plan, as far as he was concerned, was mainly aimed to prepare Malaya simply for self-government.

The book consists of eight chapters covering the time, policy and important events during the pro-consulship of General Gerald Templer in Malaya. It also covers an event leading to the professional humiliation Templer suffered at the hands of Konrad Adenauer, the Chancellor of the postwar German Republic. As the author emphasizes, the book’s main theme is the social, economic, political and administrative ‘modernization’ of Malaya introduced or continued and improved by Templer in order to set the colony on the path to self-government. His short period of about two years was not long...